


nine decades

by BeStillMySlashyHeart



Category: The Old Guard (Comics), The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Complicated Relationships, Family Issues, Found Family Feels, Gen, M/M, joe/nicky and everyone but booker and joe are fairly minor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:02:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25318009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeStillMySlashyHeart/pseuds/BeStillMySlashyHeart
Summary: Booker was told 100 years. 100 years alone and he could go home. So why is Joe waiting in his apartment after only ten?
Relationships: Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 49
Kudos: 1605





	nine decades

**Author's Note:**

> Propmt: Century has passed and the team reunites with Booker... I need some angst and more fics about Booker.
> 
> I varied a little bit from the prompt....

Booker knows there’s someone in his apartment the second he opens the door. There are no obvious signs, no evidence to point to someone having broken in despite the fact that Booker had the only key, but Booker _knew_. He knew it in his gut, in the way his skin hummed at the other man’s presence. You couldn’t spend hundreds of years in someone’s pocket without gaining some intrinsic awareness of them. So Booker knew there was someone there and he knew who it was before he even got the door closed.

He dropped his keys on the table and put his bags down, kicked off his shoes and hung up his coat and scarf. When he got to the kitchen the other man was exactly where he expected him to be, in the most comfortable chair, drinking Booker’s very expensive coffee.

“Joe,” Booker greeted.

“Booker.”

It had been ten years since they last saw each other, ten years since the situation with Quynh was resolved, ten years since Joe looked him in the eye and said, “Ninety-nine more.”

“You’re early.” Booker fussed with the coffee maker as he made himself a cup. If he was staring at the coffee maker he didn’t have to look at Joe.

“So I am,” Joe remarked idly. He sounded like a stranger. Booker had had decades to familiarize himself with Joe’s behavior and he thought he’d known him as well as anyone other than Nicky could know the man but the person sitting at his table was an unknown.

Joe was silent until Booker sat down. “I have questions.”

Booker exhaled roughly and nodded. “Ask them.” He braced himself for an outburst.

It didn’t come. Joe sipped his coffee calmly and stared him down across the table. “Why did you not say anything?” Booker cocked his head in confusion, caught off guard by the question. “You made a deal with Copley, with Merrick, to turn us over to science. Why didn’t you tell us? Why the scheming and theatrics?”

Booker rubbed at his forehead, his eyes searching the counter tops for the alcohol he’d left there this morning. But the counter was bare and Joe was waiting for an answer. He sipped his coffee. “I didn’t know what the three of you would say,” he confessed. It was a terrible answer, he knew, but it was the truth.

“Something you could have found out by talking to us,” Joe pointed out. “Instead you sold us out, set up and ambush, arranged for Nicky and I to be kidnapped, and for Andy and yourself to be locked up with us.” He tilted his head slightly, like he was trying to view Booker in a different light to see if it revealed any more answers. “Why go to all that trouble if you were planning to reveal yourself as the traitor anyway?”

Booker laughed harshly. “I’m a coward, Joe. I was a coward in my first life and I’ve been a coward in every life since. I wanted to die, I _want_ to die, and that was the first real shot I thought I could have and I didn’t want to bring it to you and have you shut me down.”

Joe shrugged. “You could have gone yourself, handed yourself over to Merrick and his scientists. You didn’t need us. If you wanted to be a lab rat so bad, they would have taken you.”

Booker stared at the table. “They wanted all of us.”

“Only because you told them about us.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Copley already knew?” Booker shrugged. “He got Merrick on board by mentioning a team of unkillable soldiers so Merrick wanted all of us.”

“So it was Copley, not you.” It wasn’t a question and Booker hated Joe for it. He wanted Booker to cast the blame on someone else, to prove that he was still a coward.

“I told Copley,” Booker admitted quietly. “He found me and I told him it was all of us.”

Joe hummed and took a long sip of his coffee. It was apparently the last of it because he stood up and started making another. “Why did you work with Copley in the first place?”

“I told you. I wanted to die.”

“But how could help you? Merrick’s involvement, I understand. He had the resources to perform the science necessary to maybe find answers. But Copley doesn’t. So why Copley?” He leaned against the counter, arms crossed, as his coffee brewed. Booker ached to fidget under his careful but held himself still. 

“He came to me,” Booker told him. “Said he wanted to help people and he thought I could help him do it.” He paused to take a sip of his coffee. It had cooled a little, no longer hot enough to burn his mouth, and he briefly considered heating it up again. “That’s what we do right? Try to help people?”

Joe made a considering noise as he sat back down with his full cup. “So Copley reaches out to you, tells you he wants your help helping people, and you sign on without a word to any of us. Then he teams up with a man with too much money and too many scientists and tells you that he could try to find the secret to our immortality and therefore a way to rid us of it and you don’t say a word to any of us. You take this information and you agree to do it but they won’t take you alone so you arrange for us to walk into a trap that Copley records for proof of our gifts, you sell out the location of our safe house and permit them to attack us and kidnap me and Nicky, and you walk Andy straight into the hands of Merrick. All without talking to us.” Joe pauses, giving Booker a chance to contradict him but there was nothing to argue so Booker stayed quiet. “All because you wanted to die.”

“Yes.” Joe shook his head, a breath of a scoff on his lips, and Booker started to get angry. “I made a mistake!” He yelled. “I screwed up. I know this, Joe, I know I did, alright? And I can’t fix it, it’s done and in the past. Now, you had questions so I answered them. I’m sorry they weren’t the answers you were looking for but they’re the only ones I have.” 

Joe watched him evenly as he spoke, not reacting in any way. Booker wanted to rage against it, wanted to scream and lash out until Joe responded in kind, but the longer they sat there the more he felt himself calming. When his breaths were even again, when his heart rate had settled, Joe spoke again. "Why did you think we would say no? Why wouldn't we want to help people Booker? When have any of us ever turned away from a fight or walked away when someone needed us? You want to die? So did Andy! Did you think she wouldn't want to help you find a way? Even Nicky and I," Joe shook his head. "A long life with the person you love is wonderful, but eternity is a very very long time. Neither of us wants to live as long as Andy has."

When he was finished, Joe didn't wait for Booker to respond. He stood up, drained his coffee and placed the cup in the sink. Then he rinsed it out and set it aside to dry, failing to actually clean it like he always did. Booker almost smiled at the familiarity even as Joe's words rang through his head. But when Nicky failed to appear beside him to wash the cup for him with a huff of annoyed fondness, his heart fell. 

Lost in his thoughts, he missed Joe crossing the room. Two hands grabbed the sides of his face and tilted him up to meet Joe’s eyes. “We are not made to be alone,” he said softly but firmly. “You especially.” Booker’s eyes burned. Joe pressed his forehead to Booker’s for a brief moment before pulling back to press a quick kiss to his hairline and stepping back. “We are at the monastery.” 

The monastery was Nicky’s favorite safe house, half an hour outside of Genoa. Booker had never asked if it had once been Nicky’s home, before he went to war, but he thought it might be. Even if it wasn’t, it was the closest thing any of them had left of their homes before.

“It hasn’t been 100 years.”

“No,” Joe laughed. “It hasn’t.” He slipped on his jacket and wrapped a handmade scarf around his neck. Booker had never seen the scarf before but he recognized the craftsmanship easily; Andy had never really gotten the hang of knitting not matter how hard she tried. “But you are missed. So it’s time to come home.”

Booker lost the battle against his tears and felt them spill over onto his cheeks. Joe waited a moment to let him wipe them away then came back over. He said nothing until Booker looked up and met his eyes. 

“If you ever betray us again, if Nicky ever spends a single second under someone’s knife or in chains because of you, I will make you wish for Quynh’s fate.” Joe spoke slowly and calmly, but there was a fire and a steel in his eyes that told Booker he was serious. More than that, if it ever came to it, Joe wouldn’t hesitate, not for a second.

“Understood.”

“Good.” Joe nodded once. “Take your time. We are not planning to leave any time soon.” 

Booker didn’t manage to say anything else before Joe was gone. 

\---

Booker took three days to gather his things and shutter his life in Paris before heading to Genoa. 

He hadn’t had a home in a long time but the familiar steps from the airport to the gates of the rundown monastery settled an inch inside him that he’d grown accustomed to over the last decade. If he had a place to call home in this day and age, it was here, with the people that were inside.

Booker hesitated outside the door. He knew Joe had been the primary factor in his hundred year sentence, knew that Nile had forgiven him that day, knew that Nicky couldn’t stay mad for long, knew that Andy was more forgiving in her mortality, knew that Quynh probably didn’t care one way or another, and yet he hesitated. 

He sucked in a shuddering breath and let out a steady exhale, letting his anxiety leave him, his shoulders and back releasing their tension, and opened the door. The steps from the entrance to the rooms they’d converted for their own use was familiar, the walkway worn under his feet.

Halfway there he started to hear voices. First, it was Nile’s laugh, crisp and ringing through the air. It was followed by shouts in three different languages and then more laughter. Booker followed the sound like he was being summoned, his feet no longer fully under his control.

The door was open but he stopped just outside and looked in. Nicky was the only one facing him and he caught sight of him immediately. There was a brief look of surprise before a genuine smile pulled at his lips. He nodded to Booker in greeting. Joe was sitting next to him, arguing something with Nile, and Nicky took his hand and pressed a kiss to his knuckles without interrupting the conversation. A moment later, Andy stopped talking to Quynh mid-word and stood, spinning to face the door, her hand on her gun. She froze and lowered the gun. “Book?”

The other conversations ceased immediately, the sudden silence ringing in the air. 

“Joe said you were here,” Booker explained. Andy and Nile turned on Joe, disbelief on their faces. Joe shrugged but didn’t offer any explanation. Nicky hadn’t yet let of his hand and squeezed it gently. “I can g-”

“No,” Andy cut him off. “You’re here. Stay.” She started towards him and Booker met her in the middle, their arms going around each other for a hug. “Welcome home, Booker.”


End file.
